Video Highlights from the Gazette Debate
Wednesday, November 2, 2011 at 4:08PM Please enjoy these two highlights from last night's debate sponsored by the Gazette and other local media. They show aspects of what it means to be "Everybody's Mayor".
[In this segment, I'm responding to a question about whether my beliefs have shifted over time, whether I've become less progressive as I've built bridges to a wide range of constituencies, some of whom feel disconnected from City Hall. The short answer is no, my values are long-held and steady. It's worthwhile, however, to probe into the question further as I do here...] "I think the key thing in your term about the 'progressive establishment' isn't so much the term 'progressive' but it's the term 'establishment'. We're talking politics. We're talking about people who have a vested interest in the ways decisions are made, in the outcome of some decisions. And I think that is much more what is at play here than the liberal-conservative thing. The liberal-conservative framework I think is really a distraction to what the real issues are. I think the real issue is that of transparency and openness and inclusion... This is about opening up city government and involving a wide range of people regardless of their political beliefs.
"Usually in Northampton, campaign reports [in non-election years] reflect very little activity. I think last year Mayor Higgins raised and spent a thousand dollars. Mine was comparable. But last year's report for David, who allegedly wasn't thinking about running for mayor, [showed that] he raised over six thousand dollars, which by Northampton standards is a large amount of money. And within that, virtually all the people who contributed to him, with the exception of family, were previous backers of Mayor Higgins... It really looks like a decision had been made over a year ago about who the candidate was going to be... There [are] clearly those who have kind of a vested interest in the direction of the city. I think you can find a lot of that evidence in the report that was filed over a year ago."